Civil Eats

When California’s leading environmental and farm organizations agree on something, lawmakers should pay attention. Last week, a remarkable alliance of farmer and environmental groups came together to urge the state’s Congressional delegation to defend funding for key conservation programs that are under the knife in the Obama Administration’s proposed 2011 budget. Read More

This is part 2 of six-part a series on seed starting. Part 1 can be read here.

Starting seeds early, when done right, is one of the most satisfying aspects of gardening. To see young, green shoots perk up through the soil while winter carries on outside is incredibly gratifying. It’s as if spring begins as soon as the first cotyledons (first leaves) pop open. It’s also an essential part of growing tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, and other crops, which otherwise don’t have a long enough season in northern climates to mature much ripe fruit.

For the home gardener lacking a heated greenhouse, there are two main ways to start seeds under protection: indoors or in a cold frame. We’ll take a look at both strategies. Read More

Vegetable expert and bestselling cookbook author Mollie Katzen’s handwritten and illustrated cookbook, The Moosewood Cookbook, (not to mention The Enchanted Broccoli Forest and her cookbooks for children, Pretend Soup and Honest Pretzels) introduced many to the love of cooking. She was inducted into the James Beard Cookbook Hall of Fame in 2007 and her most recent book, Get Cooking, was recently nominated for an International Association of Culinary Professionals Award. Beloved by many, new to some, Katzen continues her clarion call for taking back our food system one delicious meal at a time. I recently spoke to Mollie about vegetables, the new Good Food Movement, and the radical necessity of cooking. Read More

Kitchen Table Talks is excited to announce its next conversation about San Francisco’s underground food scene. The talk will be held Monday, March 29 at 6:30pm, at our new digs at Viracocha, located at 998 Valencia Street at 21st Street in San Francisco.

In the past couple of years, with the popularity of twitter, etc, we’ve seen the underground food scene explode here in the Bay Area. Informal businesses like living room restaurants and street food stands have given birth to several course meal dinners, markets, and foraging CSA’s. What’s driving this trend – hipster hype, another facet of the increasing DIY movement or real entrepreneurial drive? And what kind of future do they have? Please join us for a rousing conversation with a few of these underground mavericks as they talk about the whys and the hows of their businesses. Read More

Governments from 175 nations are gathered in Doha, Qatar this week to discuss the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES). High up on the agenda is a potential trade ban on bluefin tuna, supported by both the US and Europe, which would allow time for the species to recover before it can be traded again. Japan, where bluefin is a delicacy and where 80% of the fish is consumed, is strongly opposed to the move — despite convincing scientific evidence that the species is nearing collapse.

According to Charles Clover, journalist and author of the book The End of the Line, the Japanese press has arrived in Doha en masse, and “have been placing stories saying that the attempt to ban international trade in the bluefin is an attack on the Japanese custom of eating fish.” Yesterday’s report from Clover indicated that an Appendix II listing for bluefin is in discussion, which he says would equal “business as usual.” The film version of The End of the Line (reviewed here on Civil Eats) gave photographic evidence of the shady deals surrounding bluefin, including the fact that the Japanese company Mitsubishi is currently stockpiling the fish and now controls 60% of the trade.

While the bluefin has become a hot topic due to its sought after flesh, many endangered species get regularly ignored — even though we are currently seeing a “sixth great extinction” — one of the largest losses of biodiversity since the disappearance of the dinosaurs, according to Harvard biologist and two-time Pulizer prize-winner E. O. Wilson. Read More

Kyle Cornforth was up for a challenge. So when the founder of a cooking school in the outskirts of Chiang Mai asked Kyle, who was working at the Edible Schoolyard at the time, if she’d like to come on board as director of The Prem Organic Cooking Academy and Farm, she leapt at the chance. She wanted to share what she’d learned about local, sustainable, organic cooking at a public school in north Berkeley with students and staff at an international school in northern Thailand. Read More

ANKENY, IA — There are moments in a nation’s history that define it. For America’s remaining 2 million farmers (less than 1% of the population) and the more than 300 million eaters, the recent joint Department of Justice and Department of Agriculture workshop on lack of competition in the food and agricultural sectors held in Ankeny, Iowa is potentially one of those moments.

With concentration at record levels in agriculture today, well past levels that encourage or even allow fair prices or competition, the Obama administration’s call for public workshops is an historic event. While agribusiness continues to deny any problem, a simple look at the facts shows that the playing field for family farmers and American consumers is distorted beyond anything resembling a free or competitive market. Read More

Corn prices peaked during the run up to the 2008 economic crisis at $7.88 per bushel and as the prices of corn and other commodities rose we saw food riots worldwide. Commodity prices soon came back the earth — corn is currently trading at about $4 a barrel. Given that we’re in the middle of an anemic recovery, you’d think spiking food prices are thankfully the last thing we have to worry about.

Not so, say a pair of economists from University of Illinois (via Phil Brasher of the Des Moines Register). In an analysis of past growing seasons, they suggest that commodity corn prices could reach $7 by summer. The reason for the potential coming price spike? Would you believe ethanol? Read More

The first of the much anticipated agricultural competition workshops began last Friday in Iowa. Hosted jointly by the USDA and the Department of Justice, the workshops aim to explore the question of consolidation in agribusiness. The workshops themselves have already come under scrutiny for initially excluding actual farmers on the panels–and have come in for continued criticism that the farmers who have been put on are more representatives of corporations than real farmers.

It’s hard not to be somewhat cynical about our government’s claim that they’re shocked, shocked to discover there’s anti-competitive behavior in agriculture. On the other hand, for the last twenty or so years, consolidation has been–in Washington at least–the crime that dare not speak its name. So the fact that it’s the USDA and DOJ running these workshops is nothing short of astonishing. Read More

This is the first post in a six part series on the basics of starting seeds.

From the soft comfort of a fireside rocking chair, your garden holds endless possibilities. You can picture–taste, even–the sweet tang of your certain bushels of tomatoes, the crisp crunch of cucumbers, the melting delicateness of a pile of stir-fried snow peas. All of this dreaming is essential–and at least partly true–but luckily February moves along, and wispy garden dreams must solidify into concrete garden plans if you hope to bring your visions to fruition, so to speak.

There are many garden plans to be made–questions of fencing, fertility, and size, among countless others–but one of the most vital is planning your schedule for starting seeds. Read More

On Friday in an unprecedented move with the USDA, the Department of Justice launched an investigation into the farm business. The investigation began a 7-state probe into how Monsanto treats its customers, our nation’s farmers.

I recently had the honor of presenting for our nation’s top producing farmers in Chicago at the Top Producer Seminar, sponsored by Cargill and Pioneer. I was scheduled to present with Monsanto’s VP of Sustainable Yield, but a few days before the presentation was told that he had moved to China and that there was no one to take his place. I then had the privilege of spending the afternoon in an incredibly insightful discussion with the farmers, many of whom are Monsanto’s customers, who are remarkable fathers, grandfathers, and businessmen. Read More

Are the teabaggers ready to stop throwing tomatoes and start growing tomatoes? Glenn Beck’s latest sponsor, The Survival Seed Bank, is banking on Tea Party paranoia to sell a product it calls the “Full Acre Crisis Garden.” As Stephen Colbert noted on Wednesday, “nothing moves product like the hot stink of fear.”

For $164, you get a vacuum-sealed tube of PVC pipe filled with enough seed “to feed friends and family forever,” because, “in an economic meltdown, non-hybrid seeds could become more valuable than even silver and gold!”

But hang on to your credit card! It turns out that the folks flogging the Full Acre Crisis Garden are nothing but horticultural hucksters, as Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas revealed on Tuesday. Read More

As supporters of sustainable food production, many of us know that finding an alternative to the industrial meat supply chain is difficult but by no means impossible.  For the typical sustainable meat buyer, when one thinks of local meat, he most likely pictures a ranch, and then a steak or pork chop.  Unless he is willing to do the work of slaughtering and processing the animal himself, his access to a local abattoir is as difficult to find as local beer without the brewery. This is the marketplace reality that many small-scale ranchers face today.

As the daughter of a former butcher, I recently asked myself how we got ourselves to large-scale meat processing and what our alternatives are. Read More

For years I have been saying that it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to support Farm to School because of its common sense solution to serving local high quality food in schools and connecting children to where food comes from, but lo and behold, it does!

U.S. Rep. Rush Holt (NJ-12), an actual rocket scientist and five-time Jeopardy winner, has introduced legislation that would create a Farm to School grant program to fight childhood obesity and support local farmers.

“Farm to school programs exemplify the best use of federal school lunch dollars,” Holt said. “This is a rare opportunity for a win-win solution– a program to ensure our children get the best quality food at school, help foster local farm job growth, and create local economic growth.” Read More

An 18-year-old Dolly Freed describes the philosophy of “possum living” as follows: “It’s easier to learn to do without some of the things that money can buy than to earn the money to buy them.” For five years in the late 1970’s, this teenager and her father lived off the land outside of Philadelphia, managing a small budget, eating from their garden and choosing to actively disengage from the commercial world surrounding them. Her 1978 manifesto, Possum Living, reflecting the back-to-the-land movement of that time, is now reissued.  Although she does not make an ideological case for a return to the land as others had proposed, her participation with homestead living nevertheless aligns herself with proponents of a sustainable movement. For this reason, Possum Living has new relevance and deserves a new audience. Read More

Since the first commercial cultivation of Genetically Modified (GM) crops in 1996, Monsanto and the rest of the big six Biotech seed companies, (Pioneer/DuPont, Syngenta, Dow, BASF and Bayer) have become masters at the art of story telling. Farmers looking for the next big technology fix have loved their stories: the promise of better yields, less chemical need for weed control, higher profits and of course, a solution to the elusive goal of feeding the world.

Governments, seeing biotechnology as a huge economic engine, embraced the technology. University research was shifted almost exclusively to biotech crops. GM was the wave of the future, bankers encouraged planting GM crops to guarantee a “profitable harvest”. Crop insurance premiums were lower for farmers planting GM. Everyone bought the story. Read More

Folks across the country know something is wrong.  There’s just something about the system we’ve created over several decades that is inherently flawed. Some blame the government, others big banks, still others blame political parties, but all agree that there’s something that’s just not quite working the way it should.  People are losing homes, jobs, and health coverage at an alarming rate because of the societal turbulence in the enormous yet formless thing we call the economy.

Enter Change.org and their 10 Ideas for Change in America.  Read More

In a city well-known for hosting some of the largest conventions in the country, but not for its diverse and progressive taste in food, an experiment was born: Encourage food organizations and businesses from across Central Indiana to man information booths, and pair that “convention” atmosphere with works of art inspired by food, hands-on activities and of course, food itself.

The experiment was a success. Read More

Of the 50 or so food and farm conferences I’ve attended in the last several years, the Drake Forum for America’s New Farmers: Policy Innovations & Opportunities held March 4-5 in Washington, D.C., rises to the top. Actual farmers — not just commodity crop growers but innovative “agripreneurs” like Xe Susane Moua from Minnesota and Rosanna Bauman from Kansas — got to tell the USDA what they needed to survive.

But were policymakers listening? Many of the invited speakers with a political row to hoe seemed to be concerned about one segment of farmers in particular. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack kicked off the conference with the message that to preserve and grow rural America, which is the heart and soul of this country, we need to stop thinking about big versus small and start thinking more inclusively. He shared the usual dismal statistics — the increased unemployment in these areas, the lower per-capita income, and how more than 57% of rural counties have shrunk. All to say, what we’ve been doing to conserve and grow rural America isn’t working. Read More

March 1, 2010: Sao Paulo. Some call it the New York of the Southern Hemisphere. A sprawling megalopolis of nearly 20 million people known as one of the most dangerous cities in the world and the best example of Brazil’s tragically large gap between rich and poor. With these tidbits conglomerated together into wary expectations, I sat tensely as we idled in standstill traffic en route into the city. Sao Paulo’s skyscrapers, its sagging favelas, its ugliness—every instinct told me to do an about face and head back to Rio’s inviting beauty. But for just one week, I told myself, I can stand almost anything. Read More

If it’s true that you can judge a nation by how it treats its most vulnerable members, then unfortunately for Japan, it may be no better than the U.S., when it comes to its treatment of animals. The Cove, a riveting documentary about the nation’s barbaric slaughter of dolphins, reveals the dark underbelly of a culture better known for its love of tradition, civility, and sushi. Now the Oscar winner for “Best Documentary,” The Cove beat out Food, Inc. (reviewed on Civil Eats), a contender for this year’s category as well. Read More

When it comes to local food, supply and demand aren’t always in sync. Many Bay Area shoppers still lack convenient access to affordable local food while many farmers struggle to expand their markets, even as awareness of the value of their products continues to grow. And while traditional farmers markets and CSAs are crucial to the success of many small farms, they ultimately account for a relatively small percentage of the total food that people buy.

How then can communities provide access to more fresh, healthy local food that is sustainably produced? How do we to create more demand (and a fair market) for farmers, while ensuring food security for people otherwise entirely dependent on the industrial food system? These were a few of the critical questions on the table at Produce for the People: New Ideas for Local Distribution, a panel co-hosted last week by CUESA and Kitchen Table Talks. Read More

At a farmers market in Los Angeles, Chip Brantley bit into a plum-apricot hybrid, known as a “pluot,” and contrary to expectations found that it was not mealy or tasteless but remarkably sweet and juicy. As Brantley knows, lately consumers have been experiencing unmemorable plum-eating experiences. Why do the nicest looking plums often taste unremarkable?

In Brantley’s account, The Perfect Fruit, his fascination with the breeding and production of stone-fruits is told through a story about mad scientists and ambitious businessmen, leading him to the San Joaquin Valley to investigate the consumer and producer ends of the market. Read More

You may think you’re living frugally in San Francisco if you pillage derelict Yellow Pages for Rainbow Grocery coupons and pack your own lunch before work each day, but that kind of economy is for lightweights. You don’t know thrift until you’ve woken before dawn to shop at the city’s wholesale produce warehouses to cut the middle-man markup from your grocery bills. Even then, you haven’t sealed the real deals until the lettuce-slingers know you well enough to inquire about your family vacation and hug you when you leave with your car buckling under the weight of damp brown cardboard boxes. That’s when you know you’re getting rock-bottom prices. Read More

For my entire food love life, which is basically the number of years I have been alive, I have been plagued by conflict. Raised by one vegetarian parent, whose meal-making repertoire spanned the Whole Earth Catalogue, I was taught to consider carob chips as a very special treat. My other, carnivorous parent reveled in the rare opportunities to spoil me with “Home-Fried Taco Shell Night” and sly donut stops on the way to the dump. This devil and the angel phenomenon now haunts my kitchen time—one voice whispers to steam veggies and substitute stevia in my whole grain baking projects, while the other yells to go ahead and make that traditional coconut cream pie. I grapple constantly with being “healthy” or using the “real thing,” striving for purity of body or purity of original flavor. But in the end, can’t these two food philosophies converge?

Yes.  I think the solution lies in simply trusting in the nourishment of whole, fresh ingredients.   Read More

USDA has until Wednesday, March 3 to receive public comment on its draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) on approval of GE alfalfa. In 2006, the Center for Food Safety (CFS) sued USDA on behalf of farmers and others regarding its approval of Monsanto’s Roundup Ready alfalfa, saying that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) should have prepared an EIS. CFS won and USDA was required to prepare a full EIS analyzing the impact of approving genetically engineered (GE) alfalfa on the environment, farmers, and the public. While USDA prepared the EIS, Monsanto appealed the decision to the Supreme Court, which will hear the case later this year. In the meantime, farmers are in limbo about the legality of planting GE alfalfa this spring.

Consumers Union, the nonprofit publisher of Consumer Reports, today released new poll data showing that two-thirds of organic food consumers are concerned about GE ingredients contaminating organic food. Given the popularity of alfalfa sprouts among health-oriented eaters, Consumers Union urges USDA to consider the overwhelming consumer concern before deciding to allow GE alfalfa on the market. The poll results can be found online [PDF]. Read More

A year ago, my business partner, Caitlyn Galloway, and I started Little City Gardens. We grow salad greens, braising greens, and culinary herbs in the heart of San Francisco, which we sell to a restaurant, caterers, and individual subscribers. Little City Gardens is a lot of things: a market-garden, a small business struggling to succeed, and an experiment in the viability of urban micro-farming. We started the business with a desire to apply ourselves to the redesign of our local foodshed. We wanted to grow produce in the city and sell it. And, crucially, we wanted to be paid for our work. Read More

When I started volunteering this winter as a garden science teacher with Washington Youth Garden, entering one 3rd-grade classroom every week to help instill knowledge and enthusiasm by the children for the wonders of nature, I had no idea that this experience would inspire me to initiate a national call for Universal School Gardens.

But when I witnessed the children’s smiles and eyes light up in the course of planting seeds and watching them sprout into seedlings and grow, my appreciation deepened for the many reasons why school gardens are gaining popularity and have an excellent track record for enhancing the educational learning and natural curiosity of young people. “Every student should be free to enjoy the incomparable thrill of tasting fresh healthy food that he or she had a direct hand in growing,” I thought, “and every school in America should sprout a garden!” Read More

In a move to help consumers make more informed choices when choosing to eat humanely sourced animal products, the World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA) developed and launched the very first restaurant database. The resource identifies 150 restaurants in 15 U.S. cities that offer products and menu items created by methods that benefit animal welfare, human health, and the environment. The free database includes 11 Bay Area restaurants and others in: Atlanta, Boston, Charleston, Chicago, Cleveland, Dallas, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, New York, Philadelphia, Portland, San Diego, Seattle, and Washington, DC. Read More